Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Lots of Painting

Thus far I've been spending the majority of my vacation painting. Unfortunately, as yet none of it has been 40k related, and only a little of it has been miniature painting!

First I painted my bathroom.

Then the kitchen.

Then the living room.

And finally I got to working on some LotR Orcs I've had for a while and started working on a while ago. I had been batch painting them, and as such most of them were pretty close to completion. So I was able to complete the lot of them in one day. 49 of them, in fact. These guys have been hanging over my head for a while now, so I'm glad to finally finish them!

Friday, December 25, 2009

Mini Photo Studio

In the past I took photos of my miniatures by placing them on a large piece of white posterboard, shining a desk lamp on them in an attempt to get some light from a different angle, and then taking flash photos, and trying to make them look good using Photoshop. It got the job done, but was far from ideal...

No more! For Christmas my wife got me a "Mini Photo Studio" from thinkgeek.com. I'd seen it online a while back and thought "hey, that's neat", but I never thought about actually buying it. Now I have it!

Here are my first test photos. I think they came out pretty well compared to my old method!

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

By Request: Epic Pictures

By popular demand, I took some pictures of my various Epic scale forces. Some of them are in a state of disrepair, and I caution that the paintjobs are woefully out of date, but here they are.

Back in my days of playing Space Marine with some fanaticism, I collected and fielded an entire chapter of Space Marines, my homegrown chapter, the Nightblades.Now the chapter is somewhat depleted, as I cannibalized some of them to paint up other Space Marines from other chapters.

Back in its heyday, the Nightblades' usual foe was the Eldar from the Yriel-Dyann craftworld:The Eldar were formidable opponents, and the superheavy grav-tanks, the Tempests, and the Eldar Exarchs caused me untold amounts of frustration. As did the Eldar Phantom Titans, which unfortunately got lost in the shuffle, so I don't have pictures of them. Suffice it to say, one of them was armed with twin Pulsars, and pretty much vaporized my titans with ease.

Speaking of which, here they are, Bellator, Pugnator, and Venator:
As you can see, they've seen better days, and are due for some attention from the Adeptus Mechanicus.

My Space Marines were on occasion aided by various other forces, including the Imperial Guard:
Imperial Knights:
and the massive Imperator Titan, the Iustus Potestas:

Occasionally, my Imperial forces ended up fighting the forces of Chaos, represented here by one of their Titans:

The Ork forces never got to see battle, but I still started building a force anyway. In the future sometime they may still take to the field.
The Orks, of course, had to have some heavy support.

After Epic 40k was released, I started building forces using the new strip bases. I ended up cannibalizing some the Nightblades to make my Ultramarines force:
Also, as an experiment, I wanted to paint up squads from other chapters, so I did up a squad each of Dark Angels, Space Wolves, Blood Angels, and another homegrown chapter, the Sea Warriors.The Sea Warriors were an experiment of mine, even their name wasn't set in stone. Their symbol was similar to that of the Dark Angels or Blood Angels, but instead of a winged sword or blood drop, the Sea Warriors had a winged trident.I had not developed the chapter background all that much, other than that they had a nautical theme.

Monday, December 21, 2009

An Epic Inventory


Back in the mid 90s the game I played the most was Space Marine. The game was fast-paced, exciting, and the casualties were always horrendous. While Epic 40k and Epic: Armageddon are certainly good games, I still have a bit of nostalgia for good ol' Space Marine.

Back in the day I had collected a disgusting amount of Epic scale miniatures, and recently I started digging through some of them to see what I had. I decided to whip up inventory to get a better idea of it all.


ModelUnpaintedPainted
Eldar
Avatar2
Dark Reaper Stand2
Dire Avenger Stand4
Doomweaver42
Dreadnought8
Exarch Stand4
Falcon22
Fire Dragon Stand4
Firestorm4
Guardian Support Weapon46
Guardian Stand42
Harlequin Stand4
Howling Banshee Stand2
Jetbike Stand15
Phantom Titan2
Prism Cannon2
Ranger Stand4
Striking Scorpion Stand4
Swooping Hawk Stand4
Tempest3
Vibrocannon4
Vyper10
War Walkers3
Warlock/Farseer Stand12
Warp Hunter2
Wave Serpent2
Wraithguard Stand4
Imperial Guard
Assault Stand7
Basilisk9
Bike Stand10
Bombard3
Command Stand33
Deathstrike2
Hellhound33
Leman Russ12
Leman Russ Demolisher3
Manticore6
Ogryn Stand11
Ratling Stand4
Rhino1
Rough Rider Stand10
Sentinel55
Stormhammer2
Tactical Stand28
Imperial Knights10
Knights Paladin
Knights Crusader3
Orks
Battlewagon179
Bike Stand3
Boar Rider Stand3
Bonebreaka20
Bubble Chukka Speedsta3
Command Stand21
Dreadnought4
Grot Stand8
Heavy Weapon Stand3
Boyz Stand3322
Kommando Stand3
Lifta Droppa Speedsta1
Mega Gargant11
Nobz Stand11
Shokk Attack Gun6
Skullhamma1
Speedsta1
Stompa61
Stormboyz Stand1
Weirdboy Stand2
Space Marines
Assault Stand116
Bike Stand911
Command Stand47
Devastator Stand133
Dreadnought8
Land Raider515
Land Speeder511
Librarian Stand1
Predator3
Rapier3
Razorback33
Rhino562
Robot104
Scout Stand21
Tactical Stand6288
Tarantula3
Terminator Stand10
Thunderhawk5
Whirlwind3
Titan Legions
Imperator Titan1
Warlord Titan3

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Back in Action


After about a month of sickness and other things competing for my attention, I finally was able to do some painting last night, completing three Lotr Orcs. The picture doesn't really do them justice, but that's ok. Hopefully I'll have some more time in the near future to keep up with the painting!

One more thing I thought I would mention is that one thing I started about two years ago is painting the completion date of my minatures on the bottom of their bases. That way I can just look at the base and see how old the miniature is, and also compare old ones to newer ones to see if my painting skills have improved (or gotten worse!)